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My late mother's Kewley ancestry was "Of Ballanard" and the above statement appears in "Manx Names" by A W Moore, page 154. My Kewley tree is only about 2 generations short of Gibbon Mac Kewley and I would rather like to know more about him if anyone knows.

Thanks,

Aceh

I descend from William Austell Jnr, who it is suggested, "died a prisoner for the truth" on 12 December 1692. I also have his marriage date but nothing of his date of birth, which I believe was in the village of Oare, near Pusey, in Wiltshire. It is believed that his father William Austell Snr, also of Oare, was married to a Dorothy, whose birth family is unknown. I have found no details of births, or marriage for this couple, but they are recorded to have died within days of each other in 1679. It is further suggested that Dorothy and her son William Austell Jnr were the first of the Austell family to join the Society of Friends; whether William Snr also became a member is unknown.
I am hoping to trace this family back in time into the 16th century, beyond its association with the Quaker movement, so if anyone out there is also researching this family or can offer further information, I should be very gratefull to learn of it. 

My 3x great grandfather Joseph Johnson married an Ann Pane at St Dunstan, Stepney on 23 November 1800. Their recorded abode was MENT ie Mile End New Town. Having this information I then looked for Ann's baptism and found Prudence Ann Payne, daughter of William Payne and his wife Ann at St Mary Whitechapel on 20 April 1783; their abode again being recorded as MENT. So far, so good. Both of these events took place in Anglican churches.
However, recent additional and possibly related burial data from another researcher leads to the possibility that both Joseph Johnson and his wife were from non-conformist backgrounds, so to be sure I was on the right track, I tried to establish whether the Payne family that I was concerned with were non-conformist.
Also living in Stepney in the mid 18th century was a Captain William Payne who baptised all of his children at St Dunstan. He appears prominently in Dereck Morris's book on "Mile End Old Town 1740 - 1780". From Dereck's notes lodged at the Tower Hamlets Local History, I found that Captain William Payne had baptised a son William on 7 September 1762. There seemingly being no other Payne family in the Stepney / Whitechapel area, and 1762 would fit the baptism of William, the father of Prudence Ann very nicely, except Dereck records that this William was burned to death along with his younger brother in a house fire at the age of 4.
So, not quite so straightforward after all. Ok, all is not lost as Captain William Payne, in memory of this dead son, baptises another son William on 9 December 1769. But hang on a minute, this William is 7 years younger that the one who died; doing the numbers, this William would have had to have been only 13 - 14 years old when he sired Prudence Ann - seems somewhat unlikely. Elsewhere on the internet it is suggested that this William was washed off the deck of a ship heading for China during a storm, which, had he been the correct father of the bride, would explain why he was not a witness at the marriage of my 3 x great grandparents.

So, I have no backward link and nothing to confirm non-conformist Paynes

Hunting through Family Search, FindMyPast etc I can find other Paynes, in the West End, in Hackey and a family of non-conformists in Holborn, but none of them seem to fit Ann Pane or Prudence Ann Payne of Mile End New Town.

Is anyone else out there researching Payne / Pane or similar?

Thanks in anticipation.     

I'm hoping there may be other researchers out there looking at this family.
I am trying to make the link between a will written in 1766 by Paul Johnson at Whitechapel in Middlesex and this family in Norwich.

Paul was buried at St Mary Whitechapel on 10 February 1768 and in the register entry his age at death is given as 57 years, so we (that's another researcher and I, working together using email) are looking a his birth being around 1710 - 11. We have not been able to find this on Ancestry or Find my Past or elsewhere until I saw on Family Search "Johnson" with no forename, son of James Johnson and Mary being baptised at St Clement Norwich on 19 December 1710. The LDS film shows the register book to have suffered severe water damage, the forename being hidden in a mass of black. However, using Photoshop, I have been able to enhance the image to the extent of being able to see P..l, I think. Someone else believes there is a "u" as well.

This is subjective and not sufficient to be sure that this is correct. In the will, Paul leaves a legacy to his sister Mary, his sole surviving sibling, who is married to a Mr Woodman, and her two unmarried daughters. From another film, the register book of St Benedict Norwich records the baptism on 11 February 1734 of Mary, daughter of James and Mary. Admittedly this is a different parish, but a James and Mary also appear in the registers of St Nicholas, Great Yarmouth, and St Clement, Norwich in the interim period. I'm thinking Paul as possibly the first child and Mary the last child, as there were 24 years between their baptisms.

So, I am trying to find a marriage, sometime around the 1750s, perhaps in Norfolk, perhaps elsewhere, between Mary Johnson and Mr Woodman. We have found a suitable marriage on the 23 April 1758 at Wooton South, Norfolk but the groom was a John Betts not Mr Woodman. This is the only marriage that we've found.

So, that's where things stand at the moment. I'm hoping that someone out there in Norfolk might have come across this Johnson family or can suggest a way forward. I should add that Paul Johnson was a prominent Ropemaker in Whitechapel so it may be that the Johnsons in Norfolk were in the same trade.

George Osborn, a candidate for one of my 3 x great grandfathers, was allegedly baptised at the
"Bow (Mint Meeting?) or Georges Meeting House" in Exeter on  19 December 1784.

I believe that my ancestor was the George Osborn, by then a widower, who married the youngest daughter of a Quaker family at St Antholin, Budge Row in the City of London on 9 June 1817. Working back from the 1841 census for Hoxton (not born within the county) where he worked as a dyer scourer and glove cleaner, his age would have been consistent with a birth around 1784.

Is it certain that the Bow / Mint meeting house was Presbyterian; could it have been Quaker? Although Quaker records do not show a family by the name of Osborn in Hoxton or thereabouts, family anecdotes supported by a letter from a now deceased relative assert that the family were Quakers (or perhaps Unitarians) and the description of the dress of the ladies around 1900 seems to support this. Alas there is no photograph.

I should be grateful for any advice or assistance in confirming whether my George of Hoxton was the George baptised in Exeter.